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dwarfo

Member

Registered: 2018-07-31

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] Brightness keys not working on ASUS laptop

Hi everyone,

I have an ASUS laptop F510UA laptop.

I ran into an issue with my brightness controls on my laptop.

Here is what I've done so far

I checked what backlight module I have: ls /sys/class/backlight/

intel_backlight

I also created a file: /etc/udev/rules.d/backlight.rules

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="backlight", KERNEL=="intel_backlight", RUN+="/bin/chgrp video /sys/class/backlight/%k/brightness"
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="backlight", KERNEL=="intel_backlight", RUN+="/bin/chmod g+w /sys/class/backlight/%k/brightness"

This backlight.rules file allows me to change the brightness directly: e.g. echo 4000 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

I added in some kernel options to my grub file: /etc/default/grub

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet intel_backlight=video intel_backlight=vendor intel_backlight=native"

I also added the ASUS kernel module to load on boot: /etc/modules-load.d/asus-nb-wmi.conf

# Load asus-nb-wmi at boot
asus-nb-wmi

"xbacklight -inc 10" and "xbacklight -dec 10" still did not work at this point and they do not give any error messages.

When the above didn't work I used the package "light"

The following commands successfully changed the brightness on my laptop.

# increase brightness by 10%
light -A 10
# decrease brightness by 10%
light -U 10

But I found out that they are only limited to the terminal. I want to be able to control them from my keyboard.

On my laptop's keyboard, the brightness keys are FN+F5 (decrease brightness) and FN+F6 (increase brightness)
It seems that only the FN+F5 key works with the "light" package which it reduces the brightness on my laptop by 10%.
The FN+F6 key does not seem to have any effect on the brightness.

Not sure why my laptop is able to reduce its brightness but not increase the brightness from this "light" package.

I am using i3wm, here are the corresponding lines I have in my i3 config file: ~/.config/i3/config

# increase screen brightness
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec --no-statup-id "light -A 10"
# decrease screen brightness
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec --no-startup-id "light -U 10"

I used "xev" to check if my keys are being recognized.
Apparently holding down shift key plus the brightness key gives the correct symbol but doesn't actually change the brightness.
Link: http://dpaste.com//30KG4A7

Here are the packages I have installed on my computer if this may help:
Link: http://dpaste.com//3CWSQ8R

I loaded in a live-usb with Ubuntu 16.04.6 on my laptop.
Lowering and raising the laptops brightness seems to be functional without any issues. Would be curious of how they accomplished this.

Let me know what steps can be taken to configure brightness from my laptop's keyboard.

Last edited by dwarfo (2019-05-04 03:16:04)

Mortimer Houghton

Member

Registered: 2014-09-28

Posts: 89

Re: [SOLVED] Brightness keys not working on ASUS laptop

Is that a typo in your i3 config?  "--no-statup-id" vs "--no-startup-id"

dwarfo

Member

Registered: 2018-07-31

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Brightness keys not working on ASUS laptop

Ah I realized I made a typo there. Good catch!
The brightness control works now. Still not sure why xbacklight isn't working but at least I can control the brightness with the "light" package.

Thanks!